The role of infrared waves in increasing the quality of food products

Infrared waves have found a special place in the food industry as one of the new sources of heat production. Infrared heating technology transfers large amounts of energy to the environment or material being processed in a short time. Also improves the quality of the product and makes the product produced by this method have a higher quality than the product produced by traditional methods. Applying modern methods of heating food achieves high-quality processed products and also reduces energy consumption. One of these methods is infrared heating, which can replace many other processes in the industry as an effective method in food processing. Infrared heating has many advantages over conventional heating in similar conditions, including reduced heating time, uniform heating, high heat transfer coefficient, reduced quality loss, significant energy savings, and environmental friendliness. This paper investigates heating using infrared radiation at temperatures of 55, 65, 75, and 85 °C, and its effect on pumpkin drying. The studied parameters include moisture ratio, drying rate, effective diffusion coefficient, and activation energy. According to the results, with increasing temperature from 55 to 85 °C, the drying time decreases by about 60%, and the effective diffusion coefficient has increased by 140%.